Nutritional and Physical Degeneration is one of the most ground-breaking books ever written on the link between nutrition and health. Dr. Weston A. Price, a dentist from Cleveland, became very disturbed by what he saw in his patients. He started to see a link between the decay he found in the mouths of his patients and pathologies found elsewhere in the body like diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, gastrointestinal complaints, and more. Dr. Price also found that crowded, crooked teeth were becoming more and more common, along with facial deformities like overbites, narrow faces, lack of well defined cheek bones, and underdevelopment of the nose. Dr. Price did not believe these problems to be in any way normal; He believed they were the result of poor nutrition. The worse a person’s diet was the more decay he found in their mouth. The more decay a person had in their mouth, the higher the rate of pathologies in other areas of the body.

More than 70 years ago Dr. Price decided to search the world for primitive people who lived entirely on indigenous foods. His travels took him from islands in the South Seas to Alaska to Africa and many places in between. He visited Australian Aborigines, Swiss villages, Eskimos, traditional American Indians, Amoazonian Indians, African tribes, and more. Dr. Price and his wife Florence traveled for ten years during the 1920′s and 30′s when groups of people completely isolated from civilization could be found.

Throughout his travels, Dr. Price kept a record of his findings with pictures and detailed assessments. What he found, to be called astounding, is an understatement. Dr, Price discovered that primitive people untouched by civilization, who subsided on a diet of indigenous food, had outstanding physical development with little to no dental problems, heart disease, diabetes, or any other diseases we know believe to be a normal consequence of life.

Dr. Price’s findings were not surprising to other investigators and explorers. However, the excepted explanation at the time was that primitive people were “racially pure” and that the maladies we see in civilization were due to “race mixing”. This theory was untenable to Dr. Price who found that the individuals in groups he studied who abandoned their traditional diets for foods provided by traders or missionaries, or who moved to a more civilized area were found to develop tooth decay and degenerative conditions.

The diets of these primitive groups of people were vastly different. Some were mostly cooked food while in others most of the food was consumed raw including animal sources. Some diets were based on sea food, others on domestic animals and others on wild game. Some diets were based on dairy while others consumed a variety of fruits and vegetables and grains.

The common thread between all the groups Dr. Price investigated was none of them contained any refined devitalized foods like white sugar, flour, pasteurized or skim milk, and refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils. All the diets contained animal foods of some type and some salt. Dr. Price analyzed the primitive diets and found they all contained four times the amount of water soluble vitamins and minerals, and ten times the amount of fat soluble vitamins compared to the modern American diet.

Unfortunately, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the permanent record of his travels, is nonexistent to today’s modern medical community. This book is more important to our health and welfare today than it was 60 years ago. Our food supply, if it could be classified as food, is devoid of almost all nutritive value. We need to incorporate the fundamentals of primitive nutrition and return to nutrient dense whole food. We need to get back to local farming and turn away from manmade supermarket garbage that is destroying our health.

Anyone interested in becoming truly healthy needs to read Nutrition and physical degeneration

Researchers observed participants who were 60 years or older while supplementing them with Calcium and vitamin D3. For the first 2 months participants took 150,000IU/month, followed by 90,000 IU/month for the next 4 months. They then compared them to a control group who only took calcium.

The participants who took the vitamin D had 16.4% improvement in strength of the muscles of the hips and knees. This increase took place without an exercise plan.
J Intern Med,2009;266(3):248-57

Natural Way to Health, Jan 2010,(3)1

Because we produce vitamin D, it’s not a vitamin at all. Vitamin D is actually a pre-hormone that’s arguably the most important substance in our bodies, having an untold number of functions. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people have low or nonexistent levels and are not reaping the benefits of the sunshine vitamin.

As a follow-up to a previous article “Everything in moderation, right?“, I decided to educate my readers on substances so vital to there health daily consumption is essential. Below is a portion of “Daily Consumption“.

Coconut oil

Taken from the fruit portion of the seed off the coconut palm tree, coconut oil is one the most beneficial foods you can consume. In tropical regions where coconut oil or fat is a large portion of their caloric intake, people are much healthier and experience a much lower incidence of the modern diseases we do in the U.S. [17, 18]

There is an array of positive research published in the last few years showing the significance of coconut oil. [19] Coconut oil is classified as a “functional food” because of its health benefits that go far beyond its nutritional content. In fact, the coconut palm is so highly valued by Pacific Islanders as a source of food and medicine that it is called “The Tree of Life.” [20]

Coconut oil is the most saturated of all fats. Saturated fat has three subcategories: short chain, medium chain and long chain. Coconut oil contains approximately 65% medium chain fatty acids (MCFA). Although recognized for its health benefits many centuries ago, it wasn’t until 40 years ago that modern medicine found the source to be MCFA. Remarkably, mother’s milk contains the same healing powers of coconut oil. [21]

The saturated medium chain lipid lauric acid, which comprises more than 50 percent of coconut oil, is the anti-bacterial, anti-viral fatty acid found in mother’s milk. [22] The body converts lauric acid into the fatty acid derivative monolaurin, which is the substance that protects adults as well as infants from viral, bacterial or protozoal infections. This was recognized and reported as early as 1966. [23]

Sources located here

I this installment of Did you know… I cover an array of topics beginning with the following:

Did you know…

…creatine is perhaps the most researched supplement on the planet? Yet new data on the benefits of supplementing with this incredible substance is still mounting. Canadian researchers compared the changes in insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) amounts in two groups of subjects. All the subjects performed at least 30 minutes of structured physical activity three to five times per week for eight weeks. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one supplementing with creatine, the other, an isocaloric placeo. Muscle biopsies were taken before and after the training period and analyzed for IGF-1 content. The creatine group had a 24% higher level of IGF-1. The creatine group also had a 23% higher increase in type II muscle fibers. These findings were independent of dietary guidelines. (Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab, 2008; 18(4))

What does this mean for the average Joe? It means if you supplement with creatine, you’ll not only get the well known “volumizing” effect, but more muscle fibers.

In my latest “Did you know…” column I discuss more sunshine vitamin benefits (below); the link between obesity and bad sex; the relationship of soy foods and low sperm counts; decreasing your risk of infection in the gym, and cardiologist’s admissions.

… there are more than 800 scientific articles showing the effects of vitamin D on cancer? Some researchers point out that increasing vitamin D levels world-wide could prevent numerous diseases that claim nearly 1 million lives per year. Vitamin D, or the “sunshine vitamin,” is really not a vitamin, but a powerful hormone precursor that has an enormous influence on our bodies. Receptors that respond to the vitamin have been found in almost every human cell. Researchers have found that vitamin D has a direct influence on 3,000 of your 30,000 genes.

The health benefits of optimal vitamin D levels are absolutely extraordinary. The main reason it’s not more widely promoted is there is no money to be made from it by the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

Vitamin D3, which is technically a prehormone, has a whole host of benefits. This invaluable substance has a role in preventing or treating the following:

Cancer: It is now accepted that Vitamin D3 reduces the risk of seventeen types of cancer.

Multiple Sclerosis: It has been well demonstrated that the risk of MS increases rapidly the further away people live from the equator. The American Academy of Neurology has identified a lack of vitamin D as a predictable indicator in incidence of the deadly disease.
Diabetes
Heart Disease
Hyperparathyroidism
Hypertension
Mental illness
Osteoarthritis
Osteopourosis
Muscle weakness
Periodontal disease
Ulcerative colitis
Inflammatory bowel disease

The study authors established a strong link between vitamin D3 levels and telomere (protects the ends of chromosomes) length. They found that after taking into account the age of the subjects, women with higher vitamin D3 levels were more likely to have longer telomeres.

This meant that the telomeres in the subjects with high vitamin D3 levels were five years younger than the telomeres in the subjects with low vitamin D3 levels.

The researchers believe that the results demonstrate for the first time that people who have higher levels of vitamin D3 may age more slowly than people with lower levels of vitamin D3. (Vitamin Research Breaking News Nov. 20, 2007)

As with most nutrients in our food supply vitamin D has also almost completely vanished due to over-processing and bad farming. Supplements are your best bet, but make sure you’re using D3 (cholecalciferol).

We heard it for years, “sunlight causes cancer”.  Well, in an article by William Douglas, MD. In the Fall 2006 edition of Wise Traditions, you learn that this may not be necessarily true.  In fact, two studies in the Journal of National Cancer Institute show that increased sun exposure not only reduces the incidence of one cancer, it increases the survival rate of another.

What is it about sunlight that’s so beneficial? Vitamin D production.

Among whites in the U.S. there is a striking difference in the number of cases of many types of cancer-breast, prostate and colon, for example-between the northern latitudes and the southern latitudes.  The higher the latitude in which you live, the more likely you are to die of cancer.  In other words, New York bad, Birmingham good.  And what’s the major difference between New York and Birmingham?  New York gets a whole lot less sunshine.

What excessive sun exposure does do is cause injury to the inner layer of the skin, the dermis, which in turn, leads to wrinkling of the outer layer, the epidermis.  If you’re thinking that that happens with age (regardless of the sun), you’re right.  But sun exposure can speed up the process, causing the skin to age prematurely and to become loose and leathery.  This is called solar elastosis.

When researchers at the University of New Mexico investigated melanoma, they found a marked decrease in the disease in patients with solar elastosis.  (This information is from one of the two studies talked about in the article.)

I guess this starts to explain why melanomas are usually found on the body, “where the sun doesn’t shine”.